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Moving in Time:
Chantal Akermans Toute une nuit

Darlene Pursley

Chantal Akermans 1982 film Toute une nuit 1 is a cinematic ballet, a


nocturnal symphony that captures the movements of attraction and
repulsion between lovers2 over the course of a summer night in
Brussels. Beginning at dusk as the calm of the evening quiets the city,
and concluding the following morning with the deafening sounds of
morning traffic, the film follows anonymous individuals as they meet
and separate. The darkness of the urban evening provides a backdrop
for the choreography of love, the melodramatic gestures of the actors
materializing like luminous fireflies from the shadows. These gestures
take center stage in this film, while the nameless characters and
discontinuous mini-narratives function merely as props through
which movement is realized. Akerman does not use narrative in the
film in order to achieve continuity; rather, she creates continuity
through constant affective change that endures throughout the film.
In other words, the discontinuity of Akermans collection of fragmented narratives, often abruptly cut and seemingly independent are
fused in affect; the melody of a pop song carried across the city by the
wind, the clacking of footsteps on city pavement, rustling leaves,
slamming doors, and most importantly the poses and gestures of the
actors bodies merge in order to suggest affective change.
Given this preliminary description of the film as a collection of
fragmented stories fused together by affective rather than narrative
movement, it should already be evident that Toute une nuit requires a
certain mental flexibility from the spectator, a willingness to move
between the spatial mode of narrative and a more temporal mode of
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engagement. Akerman describes the communication between spectator and film as occurring on both a physical (or spatial) and a
temporal plane: I want the spectator to feel a physical experience
through the time used in each shot; to make this a physical experience in which time unfolds in you, in which the time of the film
enters into you [Je voudrais que le spectateur prouve une exprience
physique par le temps utilis dans chaque plan. Faire cette exprience
physique que le temps se droule en vous, que le temps du film rentre
en vous] (Bghin 23, my translation). Akerman coerces her spectator to interact with the film externally or physically, and temporally,
that is to say, internally, as affect and memory.
To analyze the syncopation between external and internal, spatial
and temporal engagement in Toute une nuit we must turn to film
theory in order to understand how space, time, and cinematographic
subjectivity have been conceptualized. Film theorists such as Dudley
Andrew and Vivian Sobchack have both commented on the limitations of semiotic, structuralist, and psychoanalytic approaches to film.
In particular, they both acknowledge how the objective and scientific
analysis of cinematic signification that has dominated film theory
forecloses the opportunity to explore, in Andrews words, the otherside of signification, those realms of preformulation where sensorydata congeal into something that matters and those realms of postformulation where that something is experienced as mattering
(Andrew 627). Similarly, Sobchack argues that this other-side of
signification neglected by film theory is precisely at the limits of
objective analysis: . . . both psychoanalytic and Marxist film theory in
most of their current manifestations have obscured the dynamic,
synoptic, and lived-body experience of both the spectator and the
filmironically, in this context, as they have respectively emphasized
the sexual and material economy of the sign and signifying subject
(Sobchack xvi). The references to the absence of lived-body experience in cinema offer a clue as to the methodological approach
Andrew and Sobchack seek to revitalize in film theory: phenomenology. Each offers well-founded arguments as to why film theory must
be able to address the embodied act of viewing as a critical aspect of
the cinematic experience, and both should be lauded for challenging
film theory in this respect.3
Just five years after Andrew wrote The Neglected Tradition of
Phenomenology in Film Theory, and about seven years before
Sobchacks The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience was
published, Gilles Deleuzes first volume on cinema appeared in

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French, Cinma 1, LImage-mouvement. Over the next six years, Deleuze


composed and published the second volume of his study, Cinma 2,
LImage-temps, and both volumes were translated into English. It was
well known that Deleuze had a fondness for thinking philosophy
from within the work of other philosophers, and even though his
analysis often modified the original works according to his own
interests, his studies have been well-received within the discipline of
philosophy. Deleuzes philosophical foray into cinema, however, has
understandably produced some confusion in the domain of film
theory because his position seems ambiguous at times; although he
problematizes Maurice Merleau-Pontys and Albert Laffays phenomenological approaches to cinema,4 he also seems to be quite close to
a phenomenological account of cinema himself. Just as Andrew and
Sobchack were thoughtfully and intelligently introducing film theory
to both old and new methodological approaches adapted from
phenomenology,5 Deleuze surfaced and disparaged the collaboration
between phenomenology and film theory. By bringing Bergson into
the discussion, Deleuze challenged film theory with an alternative
perspective on the daunting philosophical problems of subjectivity,
space, and time.6
Film theory has been working on how to classify Deleuzes Bergsonian encounter between philosophy and cinema in relation to phenomenology. I would argue that the most productive approach to this
difficult question lies in asking why Deleuze appealed to Henri Bergson
for an analysis of the cinema, and how he used Bergson as a means of
critiquing the phenomenological approach to the cinema. Having
established Deleuzes reasons for returning to Bergson, my goal is to
start over. If we admit that Deleuze is correct when he argues that
Bergson would not have criticized cinema had he witnessed its evolution, how would Bergson, not Deleuze, have read the cinema? How can
Bergsons philosophical analysis of space and time be translated into
cinematic terms on the most basic level? While such an approach
acknowledges Deleuzes return to Bergson, it also aims at an examination of what Bergson himself might have to offer film theory. As I shall
show, it is Bergsons theory that is able to provide an opportunity to
consider the unique problem of cinematographic subjectivity, space,
and time as it occurs in Chantal Akermans Toute une nuit.
In Cinema 1, Deleuze argues emphatically against a phenomenological approach to film, pitting Merleau-Ponty against Bergson, and
consequently, phenomenology against Bergson. Phenomenology,

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Deleuze contends, stops at pre-cinematographic conditions (MI


57/8485).7 Deleuze specifically targets the Merleau-Ponty of Phenomenology of Perception, in which he reads the perceiving subject as
anchored in the world (MI 57/84). This situated consciousness, or
being in the world expressed by the famous all consciousness is
consciousness of something, experiences movement in the perceptual field exclusively from its anchored position in space (ibid.).
Conversely, the cinematographic camera, which Deleuze interprets as
the perceiving subject, is characterized by spatial mobility. Because of
the cameras movement, Deleuze concludes that cinema must necessarily suppress both the anchoring of the subject and the horizon of
the world, rendering impossible an account of the cinema based
exclusively on a phenomenological model of perception (MI 57/84
85). Bergson, Deleuze argues, critiques the cinema because it misconceives movement, in the same way that perception, intellection
and language do, by taking snapshots of passing reality.8 If Bergson
were to analyze the cinema, Deleuze contends, he would not use
perception as a model. It is precisely here that Deleuze speaks
through Bergson in order to assert his own reading of the cinema:
Bergson would conceptualize the cinema contrary to the way that
phenomenology did, meaning that instead of a perceiving subject
situated in the world, cinema would be a state of things which would
constantly change, a flowing matter in which no point of anchorage
nor center of reference would be assignable (MI 57/85). Since for
Bergson, consciousness is itself an image in movement, phenomenologys anchored consciousness would be mobilized, and would be
located right in there along with the images as flowing matter.9 As
Bergson articulates, images act and react on one another, and the
subject is also one of those images, acting and reacting. Moreover,
Deleuze correctly reads Bergson, insofar as he describes images, and
thus matter, as light. The eye is in things, Deleuze states, in
luminous images themselves, meaning that the material world of
images exists without being constituted by a perceiving subject (MI
60/89). Deleuze argues on behalf of Bergson that things are
luminous by themselves without anything illuminating them: all
consciousness is something, it is indistinguishable from the things,
that is from the image of light (ibid.). In contrast, for phenomenology, consciousness is a beam of light opening onto the exterior,
drawing things out of darkness, as if the intentionality of consciousness was the ray of an electric lamp (MI 60/89).

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Deleuze distinguishes his approach to cinema from a phenomenological one by arguing that cinematic images emerge from actionreaction encounters between images, rather than from a perceiving
subject situated in space. By detaching consciousness from both the
anchoring of the subject and the horizon of the world however, as
Sobchack points out, Deleuze risks the disembodiment of both the
spectator and the film (Sobchack 31). Thus in order to ground the
film, its meaning, and the spectators lived-body situation, Sobchack
roots cinema and spectatorship in spatial terms. She identifies the
dichotomy of space and time as the distinction between her phenomenology of film and Deleuzes reading: It is not time, but space,
Sobchack explains, that grounds the question of cinematic signification in her study (31). But cinema understood as a purely spatial
phenomenon cannot fully account for something like Akermans
emphasis on a spectator in time. Bergsons own philosophical account of an interactive dualism between space and time may be able
to offer a suitable model with which to analyze spectatorship in Toute
une nuit. Akermans film invites us to reassess the problem of time in
cinematographic subjectivity, and to reconsider the medium of
cinema both as spatial extension and as internal temporal difference.
If, as Akerman explains, her spectator engages with the film as both
a physical or spatial and internal or affective experience in time, then
we cannot conceptualize her spectator as an anchored intentional
consciousness within the world of the film. However, just because, as
Bergson defines it, consciousness is an image among all of the other
images in the universe, this does not mean that mind must be
separated from body in the familiar Cartesian sense, resulting in a
disembodied filmic spectator. Rather, let us imagine that the spectators
consciousness is constantly rotating between space as narrative continuity and physical sensation and time as affect and memory. In order
to demonstrate how Akermans spectator pivots between space and
time, I will consider a series of shots in which all but one is part of a
continuous sequence. Each shot that I will look at is actually a distinct
narrative, just a few of the many that are collected together in Toute
une nuit. Ivone Margulies has described the numerous miniature
dramas of the film as microscenes, conventionally the turning
points in feature films, but in this film amassed in a proliferation of
scenes enacting clichs of love and passion (178). I will look at four of
these microscenes in order to demonstrate how the cut between
miniature dramas introduces a gap in narrative continuity. This
interruption in the narrative provides a glimpse into the constant

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affective movement that flows beneath the fragmented stories, and


fuses them together. It is the opening onto the continuity of affective
change introduced by this interval that invites the spectator to inform
the empty clich with the uniqueness and singularity of his or her
own memory-images.
In the first shot, a woman and a man, apparently strangers, sit in a
caf at adjacent tables, staring into a void in front of them. As the
steady camera concentrates on the couple in this medium, static shot,
a palpable tension gradually emerges from between the stillness and
silence of their bodies; they seem to be invisibly pulling toward and
away from each other at the same time, virtually visible as tiny micromovements. Their silence is juxtaposed with the off-screen noise of
caf activity. In a single movement, the woman gets up to leave, and
the man practically knocks over his table in order to take hold of her.
The two strangers suddenly embrace with an almost violent surge of
energy, as if they were lovers meeting again after a long separation.
Several shots later, Akerman returns to the image of this couple, still
tangled in an embrace, but now dancing in a caf. In this scene their
magnetic attraction becomes a bizarre dance in which their bodies
swing and twist, seemingly guided by some kind of invisible energy
force.
It is noteworthy that the woman, similar to many of the other
female characters in the film, wears a flowing dress and high heels,
and seems to be swinging around the gravitational center of her male
counterpart. Akermans often exaggerated depiction of gender stereotypes in these mini-narratives of love is deliberate. It is within the
repetitive movements of these banal romantic clichs that she succeeds in recovering the qualitative intensities that lurk beneath them.
Ivone Margulies argues that this repetition draws the spectators
attention to the singularity of love and passion.
In taking up love and passion, dominant themes in countless commercial
narrative movies, Akerman forces a consideration of the notion of singularity. Piling up scenes that refer in one way or another to romantic desire,
she insists that a scenes claim to uniqueness lies in its brush with
redundancy. Defying the banality of clich, these microscenes profess the
freshness of an original motivation: it is as if they said love for the first
time. Their contrast between the platitudinous and the intense gives Toute
une nuit an unclassifiable force, neither a chant damourthere are too
many birds singing the same songnor a parodic demeaning of the petit
rituals of love. (178)

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Thus Akerman does not only use clichs in order to communicate the
uniqueness of romantic love, but she uses them in abundance,
stripping, multiplying, and repeating them to the extent that they
lose all meaning. It will be the spectator who provides the singularity
or special coloration to the platitudinous romantic clich.
Continuing with the sequence analysis, we left the dancing couple
as their song was concluding. In this pause, the couple holds their
pose as the last note hangs in the air. There is a kind of living stillness
and statuesque poise in the posture of the man and woman, eyes
locked on each other. The endurance of their sustained pose introduces the spectator to a moment of temporal suspension in which his
or her consciousness is invited to pivot backward into memory, to fill
in their pose with unique images in a moment of creative productivity. If the spectator accepts such an invitation and sinks into memory,
this temporal interval will endure across the eventual cut and into the
next shot. As the next shot materializes, the spectators consciousness
moves forward once again, seeking to frame the scene into a
comprehensible framework or narrative. But the woman in this shot
has not appeared before, and consequently, the spectator is unable to
identify her within a context. Given the lack of an intellectual
framework with which to grasp the scene, the spectator can only
recognize change insofar as the couples pause from the previous
shot endures, transformed from a sustained impression of harmony
between two individuals to the annoyance of waiting.
To the extreme left of the screen, from within the obscurity, the
silent rotation of the womans head as well as her lateral movement
back and forth, accompanied by the rhythm of her footsteps, creates
a sense of expectation and anxiety coupled with boredom and
frustration. All of these emotions interpenetrate, making it impossible for the spectator to name one principal emotion that Akerman
may be trying to convey. As the woman decides to leave, the rhythm of
her feet on the pavement animates the rhythm of the shot, accelerating, and merging into the more rapid, anxious steps of her late
partner. His footsteps seem louder than his partners, and the
heightened volume on the soundtrack is contiguous with an increased tempo, which deepens the impression of these movements
on the spectator.
The intensity of rhythm slows at the moment in which the man
realizes that his partner has already left. He waits several seconds, the
rocking movement of his mental hesitation evident as his body shifts
in place. Having made the decision to try to catch up to the woman,

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the sound of his rapid steps on the pavement reveals the energy of
attraction propelling him forward. As he catches up to her, both
bodies are off-screen, and consequently, their exact physical pose and
expression as they catch sight of each other is left to the imagination
of the spectator. However, at the center of the momentarily empty
image is a small white luminous statue, arms open wide as if expecting
an embrace. The pose of the statue virtually anticipates the actual
embrace of the couple that is to come, creating a syncopation of
present and future. Again, it is the temporal suspension of the pose
that introduces an interval, an invitation to the spectator to create the
singularity of the moment by coloring it with the past. The man then
enters into the image from the left, the woman from the right. The
couple becomes visible in the image as they embrace. Once united
physically and emotionally, they move off screen together into the
darkness as a single unit.
Seemingly out of this same darkness the fading footsteps of the
united couple transform into the brisk, staccato rhythm of a single
man. His summer suit, unbuttoned shirt and longish hair render him
virtually indistinguishable from the other actors in the film, and make
it impossible for the spectator to identify him or the mini-narrative in
which he is about to take part. The only distinguishable quality that
this man offers is the steady rhythm of his footsteps on the soundtrack,
expressing a sense of determination and assuredness.
Thus far I have demonstrated how Akerman communicates affective becoming through editing, sustained poses, and in the repetition
of romantic clichs. Moreover, it is the interval introduced through
her particular use of these effects that establishes the axis between
space and time, and between matter and mind, in which the
spectators consciousness shifts away from an intellectual engagement
with the mini-narrative, and receives an open invitation to create the
singularity of the scene through memory. It is in Matire et Mmoire
(1896) that the affective body introduces a temporal interval between
action (perception) and reaction, during which the subject can call
forth the relevant memory-images that will inform his or her choice
of response. In this sense, each moment is unique insofar as the
subject creates it with the input of individual memory-images. This
sensory-motor schema, action-interval-reaction, is one way of explaining how Toute une nuit offers an aperture for affective change: if
perception involves identifying characters, making associations, and
chronologizing narrative, then Akermans fragmentation of narrative, her cuts, as well as the actors poses suspended in time,

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demarcate an exaggerated interval in which the spectator is invited to


remember. It is through the affective body that Akerman establishes
this temporal gap, an interruption of narrative space, what she
describes as the physical experience of time (Bghin 23).
However, it is possible that, had he explored cinema as an art form,
Bergson would have taken an alternate tact in order to elaborate
cinematic spectatorship. The sensory-motor schema reveals the interaction between space, the affective body and time, but for Bergson
there is another mode in which consciousness can pass from space to
temporal movement through the affective body by way of imitation,
repetition and analogy.
The concept of sympathy first appears in Bergsons Essai sur les
donnes immdiates de la conscience (1889), his first published book.
Before he could elaborate the sensory-motor schema, the interaction
between space and time in Matire et Mmoire, Bergson first had to
present his concept of time as duration. The Essai delineates quantitative space from qualitative time by setting up the opposition
between spatial extension and the interpenetration of internal psychological states. Bergson clarifies that this is an experience of the
reality of time that is internal to us, the temporal thickness of
duration that characterizes our immediate states of consciousness. He
uses two important metaphors in the Essai in order to illustrate
duration: the musical phrase and the dancers attitude or pose. Both
of these aesthetic metaphors communicate the mutual interpenetration and non-linear organization that is time; the notes of a musical
phrase melt into one another, and the dancer holds the future in the
present as his or her body virtually anticipates the next gesture.
Sympathy appears in the opening pages of the Essai when Bergson
offers the aesthetic feeling as an example of how consciousness itself
is the qualitative movement of duration. However, the concept
reappears explicitly in subsequent texts such as Le Rire (1900),
Introduction la mtaphysique (1903), and LEvolution cratrice (1907).
In an effort to introduce us to the complexity of a feeling that is
unassimilable by knowledge, the artist aims to create an aesthetic
object that is capable of absorbing our attention. The etymology of
sympathy reminds us of its Greek roots, the prefix syn or sym
indicating together, or at the same time, and pathos indicating
feeling and emotion. With sympathy, the active and resistant powers
of our personality are disarmed, and consciousness is guided into a
more receptive state (E 13/14). Having achieved this state of openness, consciousness is prepared to receive the feeling that is suggested

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by the aesthetic object. In other words, consciousness does not react


to the aesthetic image as it would in the sensory-motor schema.
Rather, consciousness is guided by the outward expression of the
aesthetic image. Taking the example of dance,10 Bergson explains
how the outward movements of the dancer suggest the feeling of grace
to a spectator through the bends, curves, and arches of the body, in
contrast to the abruptness of broken lines (E 1112/12). The bent
line changes direction at each moment, and each new direction is
anticipated in the preceding one. It is in this sense that grace gives us
the experience of time as duration, what we experience as a pleasure
in stopping the progression of time, and as such, holding the future
in the present (E 12/12).
Bergsons account of sympathy in the Essai is of particular interest
because he elucidates it as both a bodily and a temporal movement
that is different in kind from the sensory-motor schema insofar as it
suspends the circulation between space and time, perception and
memory. Instead, our body begins to involuntarily imitate the affective movements expressed by the artist. He notes two different modes
of internal reception, the first being the physical excitation, or the
involuntary response of the nervous system, the movements of which
are subsequently translated in the second mode into affective sensations which are capable of being recognized by consciousness (ibid.)
He calls this temporal syncopation between art and spectator, external and internal a virtual, nascent sympathy, in which our profound
self, swayed by these movements, temporarily forgets itself as in a
dream in order to think and see with the artist (E 14/15).11
Yet the artist aims at giving us a share in this emotion, so rich, so personal,
so novel, and at enabling us to experience what he cannot make us
understand. This he will bring about by choosing, among the outward
signs of his emotions, those which our body is likely to imitate mechanically, though slightly, as soon as it perceives them, so as to transport us all
at once into the indefinable psychological state which called them forth.
Thus will be broken down the barrier interposed by time and space
between his consciousness and ours: and the richer in ideas and the more
pregnant with sensations and emotions is the feeling within whose limits
the artist has brought us, the deeper and the higher shall we find the
beauty thus expressed. The successive intensities of the aesthetic feeling
thus correspond to changes of state occurring in us. . . . (E 18/1516)

Through involuntary physical excitation, the barrier interposed by


time and space, that is to say, the orientation of consciousness toward
action, disintegrates, and there is a shared movement between the

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affective states of the artist and our own states. In this sense, the
bodys physical imitation and repetition of the affective movement
within the aesthetic work draws us into corresponding or analogical
states of consciousness.12
Bergson explains that the intensity of sympathy can be enhanced
when the aesthetic object is accompanied by rhythm or music (E 12/
12). Rhythm intensifies the degree to which affective movement can
take hold of us. Additionally, rhythm is not limited to music. Poetry,
sculpture, architecture (we can include the cinema as well), also
possess the potential to incorporate rhythm (E 1516/14). In contrast to the movement of musical notes, the plastic arts communicate
rhythmic movement to the viewer in the fixity which they suddenly
impose on life [la fixit quils imposent soudain la vie] (E 15/14). For
example, Bergson describes how a sculptor can impress an affective
trace on the rigidity and immobility of stone with the lightness of a
passing breath [effleurent peine comme un souffle] (ibid.). Bergsons
metaphor also underscores the proximity, and potential interactivity,
that exists between inert things in space and the fluidity of time. This
metaphor of breath persists when he describes sympathy as a physical
contagion, another allusion to how moving in time with an artist
commences as a corporeal transmission of movement (ibid.).
Bergson explains that consciousness has access to varying degrees
of absorption within the artists movement, reminding us that it is not
all or nothing when it comes to sympathy. The suggestion of
movement could hardly interrupt the dense tissue of psychological
facts that composes our individual history, the suggestion could have
enough force to just partially detach attention from our own memory,
or the suggested feeling could absorb us to the extent that it
overwhelms our own soul (E 16/15). Sympathy can thus progress to
the point where individual thought and will becomes completely
permeated by the outward movements of the aesthetic image.13
If Bergson had the opportunity to view Toute une nuit, would he
elucidate cinematographic subjectivity as a sensory-motor schema, in
which the spectator could inform the filmic image with the singularity
of his or her memory-images, and therefore exercise choice in regard
to the degree of his or her engagement? Or would he describe the
filmic experience in terms of his model of sympathy, in which
Akermans suggestion of affective movement could potentially take
hold of consciousness entirely? Since the answer to this question is
unknown, and of course contingent upon the individual film that is
being studied, the only possible means of addressing the problem is

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through further study of the relationship between Bergson and


cinema, and accordingly, an articulation of the similarities and
differences between a Bergsonian and a phenomenological approach
to cinematographic subjectivity.
University of California at Berkeley

NOTES
1 In a slightly different version, this paper was presented at the conference La
Fiction clate: Petits et Grands crans Franais et Francophones (Fiction
Breaks Out: French and Francophone Television and Big Screen Productions) at
the cole Normale Suprieure, Lyon, France in Summer 2004. The conference
was organized by the AFECCAV, the Ina, and the SCMS.
2 Ivone Margulies has described the gravitational energy that seems to pull lovers
together in Toute une nuit as a physics of desire (Margulies 179). As the author
of the only full-length book on Chantal Akerman to date, Margulies is the leading
voice in Akerman scholarship. Her comprehensive and intelligent analysis of
Akermans films has opened many doors for future study on the filmmaker.
3 Along with Sobchack and Andrew, Allan Casebier has also participated in the
move to rejuvenate film theory with a turn to phenomenology in an effort to
develop new possibilities and vocabularies for thinking about cinema. See
Casebiers Film and Phenomenology: Towards a Realist Theory of Cinematic Representation.
4 In The Neglected Tradition of Phenomenology in Film Theory, Andrew reviews
the early history of the phenomenological approaches to cinema that appeared in
France, naming Merleau-Pontys essay Le cinma et la nouvelle psychologie,
and Albert Laffays Logique du cinma among many others. In his critique of the
phenomenological approach to cinema, Deleuze cites these two studies as the
focus of his critique. See Cinema 1: The Movement-Image 57 and 57n3; and see 84
and 85n3 in the French edition.
5 While Andrew offers a detailed history of the encounters between phenomenology and cinema, Sobchack carefully distinguishes her phenomenology of film
experience as originating from Merleau-Pontys later semiotic phenomenology.
Both offer rigorous and thorough accounts of the intersections between cinema
and phenomenology.
6 Dorothea Olkowski has analyzed, through her reading of Luce Irigaray, the
breach between Henri Bergson and phenomenology. Her assertion of an implicit
Bergsonian critique of phenomenology within Irigarays writing inspired me to
reflect on Deleuzes insistance on a Bergsonian, and not a phenomenological
approach to the cinema. See Olkowskis The End of Phenomenology: Bergsons
Interval in Irigaray and Gilles Deleuze and The Ruin of Representation.
7 The first page number refers to the English edition, the second one to the
French.
8 Deleuze is referring here to Bergsons cinematographic illusion elaborated in
Chapter 4 of LEvolution cratrice.
9 Deleuzes reading of the cinema through Bergson here is based on Chapter 1 of
Matire et Mmoire: But the cinema perhaps has a great advantage: just because it
lacks a centre of anchorage and of horizon, the sections which it makes would not
prevent it from going back up the path that natural perception comes down.

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Instead of going from the acentered state of things to centered perception, it


could go back up towards the acentered state of things, and get closer to it.
Broadly speaking, this would be the opposite of what phenomenology put
forward. Even in his critique of the cinema Bergson was in agreement with it, to
a far greater degree than he thought. We see this in the brilliant first chapter of
Matter and Memory (MI 58/85).
Bergson uses artiste in the original French, translated as dancer in the English
version. I have honored the translators choice here because Bergsons illustration
of grace in this passage strongly evokes the image of a dancers body.
Walter Benjamin, in his essay The Storyteller depicts an account of communication between storyteller and listener that is remarkably similar to Bergsons
concept of sympathy, a mode of transmission that was becoming more rare with
the changes that accompanied modernity. Furthermore, Benjamins example in
this essay of how boredom facilitates the necessary relaxation of consciousness
required for oral transmission reminds us of how Akerman uses the experience of
waiting in Toute une nuit in order to orient consciousness toward temporal depth.
Benjamin says, This process of assimilation, which takes place in depth, requires
a state of relaxation which is becoming rarer and rarer. If sleep is the apogee of
physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the
dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him
away. His nesting placesthe activities that are intimately associated with boredomare already extinct in the cities and are declining in the countries as well
. . . The more self-forgetful the listener is, the more deeply is what he listens to
impressed upon his memory. When the rhythm of the work has seized him, he
listens to the tales in such a way that the gift of retelling them comes to him all by
itself (91).
For a detailed analysis of how Bergsons sympathy operates as an analogical
relation between consciousness and realities external to it see David Lapoujade,
Inuition and Sympathy in Bergson.
The political implications of this power in art are clearone need only to think
of the mesmerizing movements of Leni Riefenstahls Triumph of the Will.

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